Meaningful Travels

This last Wednesday, I travelled to Toronto to attend the book launch of Honouring Age by my friend Mona Tokarek LaFosse. Mona has been working on this book for some time, and so I was very happy to be able to join her and others to celebrate this labour of love. The completion of each of my publications has been a satisfying experience. But nothing quite compares to the experience of holding the first book with your name on it.

I opted to take the train to Toronto. I find train travel to be a bit of a balm, especially if the alternate involves driving the 401 at peak times. Another bonus was that the train got me into Toronto early enough to afford me the occasion to attend the Art Gallery of Ontario. I first became a regular there during my graduate days, when a student pass made possible a weekly visit for something like 40 dollars per year. It was an oasis. I kept up my membership after leaving Toronto although the loss of a student rate meant it was a bit more money. But still I ventured into TO a number of times per year, by rail, enjoying a day away with art. Covid destroyed that.

So I was happy to become reacquainted with the AGO, which now has a year-long pass for a mere $35 per year! I utterly enjoyed my time, wandering about aimlessly for a bit before visiting a Keith Haring exhibit on the fourth floor, whose work I saw at the AGO some years ago. It was fascinating and a little bit disorienting – in a good way. Afterwards I made my way down to the second floor, entering from the back of the building. I was soon utterly lost. I used to know the second floor like the back of my hand, but the AGO has re-walled the space, and mixed up the work on offer. They have thickened Indigenous representations and set these alongside of “old favourites” in a way that enriches the viewer’s experience.

I next walked north to Emmanuel College for the book launch, and along the way passed a street where some 22 years ago – in a restaurant whose name I can no longer recall – a festive dinner was held. The event celebrated the launch of a Festschrift that Pam McCarroll and I had shepherded to honour the career of my Doktorvater, Iain Nicol, now at peace in the womb of God’s love. It was a wistful moment when I paused my walk and looked down this avenue of memories.

The launch was successful and after a train ride home, I walked back to 185 Sheldon Ave. N., sated.

And then just yesterday I went for a walk on the Walter Bean Trail in Kitchener, following the steps that I had taken with two of my three amazing daughters just before Christmas. It felt a bit as if they were walking along with me, and as I looked up to see the geese honking and flying in various iterations of a “V,” I noted that one such flight pattern more closely approximated a check-mark, thereby giving me a fowl version of a thumbs-up, perhaps.

Travel is remarkable. Sometimes God saddles up alongside our pilgrimages to knead the memories of our bodies in a way that soothes our souls, and to arrange the detritus of our life into evocative collages. Sometimes a walk is just a ramble but when the stars, or geese, or art, or memories align the gamble that is life takes on a fleeting but breathtaking poignancy. And we step into the One stepping longside us.

Into the Night

I went for a walk one night
this last week, my mind caught
up in that space between
hard facts and fickle feelings,
even though I know that
facts aren’t really hard nor
are feelings fickle.

I stopped for a moment at
that sweet spot between
two streetlights, that holy
place where I shadowed
in both directions equally:
the me-ahead mirroring
the me-behind.

I thought that this might be
a parable about life, or maybe
I sign I could divine in these
peculiar times. But in the end
I decided that this was simply
a strangely satisfying sight, which
might be what I most need as
I step into the night.

Subtle Hope

My running life is now on hold for a week or so. Some sort of a tear, or perhaps gordian knot, in my right leg muscle has sidelined me, although I am able to walk without pain. So yesterday instead of going for my Saturday ritual run of 10 km, I opted to walk to the market in downtown Kitchener. I go to the market irregularly but am always glad for it. In the winter local businesses and farmers have a place to sell in a warm place and in the summer the market grows and spills out on a parking lot. I grabbed some goose pate, chicken rouladen, Oktoberfest sausages, and Icelandic cod along with about 10 lbs of beets for making beet pickles. I was delighted by my purchases and the journey to and from downtown.

I do have to say that the trip home was more enjoyable than the trip to the market, even though my backpack was a bit heavier on return. I walked to the market down Weber Street, which is the same route I use when I drive to work. It is a street that approximates a highway – four lanes wide with people generally travelling far faster than the posted 50 km/h limit. It is always interesting to walk where I generally drive. I was reminded again that a good number of the homes on this route are under duress, and the racing of cars was sometimes a bit much. For the trip home, by contrast, I walked back on King Street. It is a two-lane street with lots of lights that slow down traffic. It feels a bit more humane, and it was interesting again to see a number of apartments being built: developers clearly imagine that this part of town – once a bit rough, has more of a future.

The only downside of the walk home was the Ottawa Street stretch, where a number of businesses had not cleared walkways, reminding me again that the world is not friendly to those in wheelchairs, or with walking challenges. Sidewalks that were cleared were stained white with salt – a trace of winter’s slow recession, in this month of March that takes up a liminal place between winter and spring. Dirty snow sits aside whitened asphalt while the lengthening sun wrestles with still artic air. Some days winter wins; some days spring succeeds.

I made it home in time to have my goose pate on rye bread, with Akvavit and a nice cold pilsener alongside of it while my wife and I chatted online with our daughter imbibing her breakfast in Vancouver. Her world is well into spring, while we wind our way through this month named after the Roman god of war. While winter and spring wrestle, I nestle into anything that affords me a little comfort – especially in light of the hard and dark news from Ukraine this week. Hope seems to be in short supply but does lift its head here and there in little acts of kindness, in subtle seasonal signs in this month that reminds me that transitions are not always easy: whether they be the birth of spring or the death of winter or the death and birth of a people.

Walking down an Addis Street

my mind drifts, following
my eyes, now on a
pothole, now on a
building bending from sky
to ground, now on
beauty whisking across
the street with poise and purpose,
now on a row of toilets and sinks
and pipes for plumbing lives.
But then I see a little finger
swaddled in a mother’s
hand. And I think on
You and my soul
floats up to a
place where
I know
Love.

Deceptively Pedestrian

My walk home from church was unexceptional; aside
from the fact that I can walk and the street-
side tress cannot; and aside
from the fact that the sky
opened for a time and showed
me the divine eye: and aside
from the fact that the wind
whispered my name and the
horizon smiled at me; and aside
from the fact that the blessed
dead watched my every step,
counting each one and writing
them in ‘The Book of Strides’; and aside
from the fact that I remember angels
rambled round King Street, dressed
incognito – although their wings
left tufts of down under
this tree and round that bush.

My walk home from church was
deceptively pedestrian.

A Blessing for Pilgrims for Indigenous Rights

Friends, I was asked to provide a blessing for some pilgrims walking from Kitchener to Ottawa in support of Bill C 262, which requests the implementation in Canada of the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for truth and reconciliation, as per the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s report. This pilgrimage has been organized by the Mennonite Church Canada. My blessing followed upon a traditional sending by Myeengun Henry, an Ojibway elder in our city. The text for it follows:

God bless you in this journey of justice and peace.

May your feet feel each treaty
Holding you as you cross its reach,
Sustaining you as you walk in a good way.

May your ears be ready to hear
The stories sown in the territory you
Traverse step by step.

May your hearts beat in time with
Our Mother, the Earth
Who watches over you
In love, in delight.

May your minds be as one
In the community you are
On the way to truth and reconciliation.

And may you know

That your knowing is first being known.

And your loving is first being loved.

And your passion for justice and peace

Is first and finally God’s Reign in your midst.

God be above you, below you , behind you, beside you, before you and within you – as Holy Flame; as Sacred Word.

Public and Private Transit

I generally exercise at the Athletic Centre at the university where I work. I find fitness breaks really need to be convenient, or they are quickly sidelined by this pressing need or that persistent email. Having a gym ready at hand is so very helpful. An added bonus is that my weekday runs are on a treadmill, which I understand to be easier on the knees.

On the weekends, however, I like to do an outside run. It is really a rather different experience in that I use some alternate muscles when running on the ground. Yet other important differences obtain. I have to pay more attention as I run. Traffic patterns, and sidewalk and road hazards warrant attention, as well as the especial need to negotiate people who are travelling in the same direction as me.

Last Saturday I was running down Weber Street, and crossed Franklin, at which point I usually turn left and run a couple of blocks before ducking into a cemetery, a soothing stretch in my run. As I ran toward my intersection, I saw the light go green in my favour, with a walk light to boot. I looked ahead and saw a woman in the right (turning) lane coming toward me. I have learned that you want to ensure you make eye contact in such cases. She saw me, and I kept an eye on her as I sprinted across the street. She glared at me. I suspect it was because I was slowing down her turn. Unfortunately, I understand her impatience. I experience it when I drive.

There is something about getting in a car that ratchets up my hurry-up gene. I have told colleagues that when I drive to work, I arrive with my shoulders tight, my brain a little frazzled, and my blood pressure seemingly raised. But when I catch a ride, take the bus, or walk I arrive relaxed and ready to begin (or end) the day with more equanimity. I experience myself differently in a vehicle. I am often uptight, anxious and impatient – having experienced anything and everything in my way as a hazard and/or an annoyance. In the middle of winter, when I have to wait for pedestrians, I have to remind myself that I am safely ensconced in a few thousand pounds of protection that is temperature controlled, and the poor shmuck on the street is navigating puddles, or snow-banks, or howling winds with a few layers of protection. I have to remind myself that I can afford to take a deep breath and show a little kindness.

There have been news stories this last while about sidewalk-free neighbourhoods protesting the planned implementation of walk-friendly streets. At one level, I can understand this. Walkers can be erratic, and some are even in-your-face bold. But a refusal to address the fact that most of us will one day necessarily need to be able to walk to public transport seems naïve at best, and willfully belligerent at worst. This refusal, at a deeper level, bespeaks a deliberate rejection of empathy; an unwillingness to experience the street in the shoes of people on the street; knowing what it means to be the little guy in the fight.

Drivers, it might be said, are an individual manifestation of the cult of efficiency run amok. The person before me no longer represents a relationship to be negotiated, but a problem to be solved. Of course, I am really transferring my shallowness and impatience onto other drivers, whom I only know from a glance or two (or worse yet from no glances) in my direction. For all I know, their driving might be attributed to a hard hospital visit, or a troubling performance review, or a fight with their partner, etc. But then again, such factors are really an argument in favour of a broader access to public transit – an argument, alas, which may well fall on deaf ears since many of us, I think, prefer the private character of our cars to the “public” of public transit.

I suppose both the private car and the public transit represent seemingly innocent answers to the innocent question: how do we get around? But we cannot afford to ignore that this seemingly benign question is sometimes answered in a malign modality that shape us in ways unaware. At the end of the day, cars more often than not enforce a self-enclosed subject who engages his or her surroundings via the mediating power of a car, while a walker or jogger, or such has a more intimate relationship with her or his environs.

There may be a life lesson in this. I’ll leave that to others, but I want to make the simple observation that no one can opine on this increasing question with impunity. We all have some skin in the game. I, for the sake of the environment – which includes me, look forward to the day when buses and streetcars outnumber cars on our roads. In the interim, I’ll try hard to smile at passing motorists, and patiently wave walkers across the road.

5 O’clock Dark

Heading home, Friday last,
I passed the Salvation Army and
the street lamps did me the honour
of multiplying my shadow leaving me
variously iterated in black:
here short and squat, like a puddle at feet
there long, lean and sliding across the street
but ahead just right, properly proportioned
and cutting a sweet angle a little left of centre,
slightly smug until an ambulance navigating the traffic
rendered me red on Sally Ann’s wall –
each shadow dancing a life under
the aegis of an emergency’s brief
incursion – after which I stepped
off the curb and slipped across
the street into a stretch
of easy dark.

Some Kind of Walk

I am now a week back from walking the last third of the Northwest Mounted Police Trail. My wife and I walked about 110 km of a 300 plus km trail. The trail runs from Wood Mountain Park to Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills. It was established by the NWMP in order to keep the peace in an area frequented by “Wolvers” from south of the border in the late 19th century in what is now southern Saskatchewan. These folk were known by this name since they killed bison, poisoned the meat and then collected the hides of wolves who ate this. They ran a booze business on the side, selling to Native Americans who were in the midst of losing a way of life as the bison disappeared from the land, and as the Canadian government waited upon them to starve, until they finally agreed to sign treaties in a desperate attempt to find a way in this new reality. This patrol trail across the praire is wet with tears.

How is it that I found myself on this trail? My friend Matthew Anderson, a theologian and documentary producer invited me and my wife and we said yes. You can learn more about this at Matthew’s site. Matthew is a scholar of pilgrimage and was piqued by the observation that people who research pilgrimage often write and research European trails, but seemed little interested in North American sites. He grew up in southern Saskatchewan and so knew of this trail and of its significance. He thought it especially important to visit in light of the recent report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which speaks of the continuing need for First Nations and Settlers to work toward renewed relationships of truth, accountability, justice, and concern for the land.

I learned much on this walk. We arrived on a non-walk day. In the evening, the author Candace Savage spoke to us of the sad history of this place. I bought her book and asked her to sign it. She did and wrote “welcome home” above her signature. This was a bit odd, since I am not from Saskatchewan. I grew up in central Alberta, in what is called “parkland.” But as I walked across this bald prairie, replete with breath taking coulees, horizons that spoke of the Creator’s breadth of fierce mercy, and a sky that glistened with the stark clarity of a diamond, I found myself breathless. Every now and then I would stop, and look, and find myself with hands on my hips: just looking. It reminded me of my dad, raised on the prairies, who would do this from time to time on our farm. We would be on our way to look at the cows, or check the grain, or whatever, and he would stop – like a man with all the time in the world – and look to the horizon with hands on hips. And here I was, reprising his posture, a posture formed in his southern Alberta by like surroundings. And then Candace’s note rang true. This was a homecoming on foreign territory.

All territory is foreign to us. We experience it as a home-becoming when we walk it. Walking is a holy venture: prayer on feet trod with attention to the marvel and miracle walking is. Children who first learn to walk and people who have lost their ability to walk know so very well that walking is a wonder. Walking is wonder-ful. As I walked this trail I found myself over and over again. I saw myself in my fellow pilgrims who both looked forward to a day’s end while they wished it went on forever. I heard myself in the Swainson hawks who prayed us across the prairies. I sniffed out myself in the sweet sage that bore witness to hope on hard ground. I felt my skin as I caressed teepee ring rocks, reminders that this land that has adopted me is my elder, my mother. I tasted myself in fresh bread made by farmers who invited us in, with prairie hospitality. As an ancient sage noted: we are grains of wheat, crushed, wetted, fired and broken to become food for the hungry.

I have walked for a time. I have walked with others, with the land, and by myself. I am richer for it, and now wonder how to best invest what I have accrued from this time. I am confident that a pathway will open up, as pathways do: mysteriously.

Thanks to Matthew Anderson for this photo!

More Squealing, Please

Yesterday, while walking to church, I passed some gentlemen from the local constabulary, who were on parade patrol.  They were dressed in the requisite neon yellow on black.  The sky was in a bit of a huff, blowing clouds to and fro, and so allowing slivers of sun to shine on my face.  My walk to church is north-westerly and, as you can imagine, more often into the wind than with it.  To this insult is added the injury of an uphill to church, with the result that the trip home is a bit ephemeral: being down hill with the wind to my back and the sun on my face.  All the same, I enjoy the walk to church as much as the walk home – but I digress.

 

Shortly after crossing the paths of Waterloo’s finest, I began to see the participants of the annual Downtown Mudpuppy Chase, with proceeds going to help out KidsAbility.  I had hardly crested the last hill before beginning the flat that precedes the slow climb to downtown proper when out of the corner of my ear I heard a familiar voice.  I glanced over and shouted, “Is that you, L?”  “Yes, I thought that looked like you,” said she, and so we walked together for a time.  The Chase began with a 3K walk for those who benefit from Kidsability’s important work with youth and their supporters.  I had opportunity to meet L’s son, M, who was in a chair and loving the walk.  Mom had a big smile on her face, as did M’s care worker who was out in support of the event.  L and I chatted as we walked, and at one point, M let out a big squeal.  “He loves the wind on his face,” said Mom.  I smiled, and we continued to visit in spite of the hard slug up the last bit of King before it meets Frederick, where I peeled off to the left to make my way to St. Matthews.

 

At church that morning, we were witnesses to the baptism of little H.  She was adorable – all squeaky clean in white and was so very good through all of the baptismal liturgy.  After the baptism proper H let out a squeal that brought forth both laughter, and to my mind, M’s bend into the wind.  I wondered, for a moment, if H was feeling a bit of that Holy Wind herself.  At any rate, these two not-wholly disparate events got me thinking.

 

Why don’t we squeal more?  Where is that primal voice at joy, or astonishment, or satisfaction?  Why is it so carefully filtered out?  Why do we worry so, about being proper when something that is life affirming and death defying catches us unaware?  Why can’t we just let it out?  At least a little?

 

I suppose, in a sense, this is a bit rich coming from me: who tends to conservatism in dress and aspires to propriety in demeanor.  But perhaps this last sentence begs the question: after all, what has dress got to do with it?  And why should we imagine that expressing joy isn’t proper? It seems, in some ways, that our burial of primal speech is an indication of our discomfort with our body.  We hide our skin, we hide our feelings, we hide our voices, our selves.

 

It seems to me that that that itinerant preacher who invited us to become like children if we want to enter the Reign of God was onto something.  Perhaps a little more squealing, and a little less squirming might go a long way to making the world a more hospitable place and so, much more real.